1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of cognitive disorders including assessing attention deficits and/or comorbidities, treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and/or conditions with attentional impairment such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), anxiety, depression, and Alzheimer's.
2. Background of the Art
Based on the National Survey of Children's Health, 5.4 million children, 4-17 years of age, met criteria for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in 2007.1 Despite this high number, only 50 percent of children and adolescents are estimated to be diagnosed and treated. A core deficit in ADHD is impairment in executive functioning. Significant debate about the causes and pathophysiology associated with its development persists. Studies investigating the neurochemistry, neuroimaging, and neuropsychological genetics have found evidence suggesting that frontal/striatal regions playa key role in the pathophysiology of executive functioning disorders, namely, the caudate, putamen, lateral prefrontal cortex, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Abnormal structure, functioning, or both of these regions have been implicated in ADHD, 4 further linked to abnormal functioning of norepinephrine and dopamine systems, which affects working memory. Working memory is the capacity to hold in mind information that is used to guide behavior, and deficits in this regard have been proposed to underlie inattention, distractibility, and poor academic performance identified in ADHD.
Current diagnostic tools used to identify executive functioning deficits and child behavior problems are subjective, such as the Conners' Rating Scales, and can thus produce variable clinical impressions. The Continuous Performance Test (CPT) is objective, but has not proved to be a reliable means to identify ADHD. The gold standard of diagnosis remains a professional psychiatric evaluation, which unfortunately is a limited resource in the United States and worldwide.
A rapidly growing field called “Games-With-a-Purpose” has been successful in solving several serious scientific problems. Tangible user interfaces are a novel and useful medium for games meant to aid in diagnosis of behavioral disorders. Differing from traditional graphical user interfaces, tangible user interfaces allow participants to have more naturalistic interaction with presented information and experience through physically holding and moving the devices representing game objects and interact with games. This is an important advancement from the traditional use of simple button press responding. Furthermore, this technology introduces vastly more measurement opportunities not available with a graphical user interface (i.e., button presses). Precise movement can be detected, which is especially useful for examining executive functioning-based disorders that bear on motor behaviors such as hyperactivity involving excessive movement, while inattention leads to delays and increased variability in response to stimulation.